Pittsburgh Air Is Still Bad, But It Is Getting Better

Air quality in western Pennsylvania improved in 2016, according to three regional monitors tracked by the Allegheny County Health Department.

“It was a good year in ozone,” said Jayme Graham, the department's air quality manager.

Allegheny County keeps an eye on harmful, ground-level ozone throughout the summer and small particulate matter in the air year-round.

Complete 2016 data for particulates will not be available for a few months, but ozone monitor readings show Pittsburgh only broke federally-set limits five times in 2016. That's great news for a city once known for its perpetual black clouds, Graham said.

“Emissions are much less than they were before with controls on power plants, better running vehicles,” she said. “The other thing, even though we had high temperatures in August, we also had more rain and rain essentially washes the air out.”

Ground-level ozone is created when air pollution, often in the form of urban smog, is bombarded with sunlight. It can cause respiratory irritation and damage crops and other vegetation.

Warnings are issued by the state whenever there is an expectation that ozone levels could become dangerously high. Only one such warning was issued for Allegheny County in 2016.

“Predicting an air quality action day is a little bit difficult," Graham said. "It’s actually predicting the weather and then predicting chemistry in the weather, so we don’t always match exactly."

A report released Thursday by the Allegheny Health Network found a high rate of asthma in Allegheny County elementary school students. The study suggests poor air quality is partially responsible for the pervasive incidences of childhood asthma in the Pittsburgh region.

Deborah Gentile, the director of allergy and asthma clinical research at Allegheny Health Network, surveyed 267 fifth graders in the county and found 29 percent had asthma and 11 percent more were at risk of developing the disease.

It’s no secret that the air quality in Pittsburgh isn’t great. Last month, the American Lung Association ranked southwestern Pennsylvania as having the eighth highest level of year-round pollutants and the fourteenth highest level of short-term particle pollution in the nation.

Pittsburgh’s air quality has a ways to go before it's considered healthy, according to the American Lung Association’s latest State of the Air report.

“We report based on how many unhealthy air days they receive for ozone and daily particle pollution,” said Paul Billings, national senior vice president of advocacy. "We also look at the EPA’s reports for year-round particle pollution as well."